A Terrible Thing
by PikaCheeka
Summary: Madara chronicles the betrayals, both by him and against him, in his relationships with the three most important people in his life as he carries out his final battle with his student Obito and gives him one last bit of advice. Mild HashiMada. Immediately follows chapter 665. Written before 666 as a headcanon wish-prediction for it.


So this is my…desire? for chapter 666. I know it isn't going to happen, especially with the HashiMada bit. I've had this idea all week and tried to get it done today before the chapter came out and ruined it. I know most won't read it in time though, and it's probably a bit sloppy for being rushed.

I know that I did not stick to 100% canon text for a few lines that overlapped with the manga, but I kept the general gist. I don't like repeating manga verbatim though, and prefer to touch it up a bit in a fanfic. As for the years? They are roughly my headcanon, give or take a few.

This is definitely not a pairing fic. There are a few HashiMada moments but this is really just a Madara fic, chronicling the betrayals in his relationships with Izuna, Hashirama, and Obito, as he carries out his final battle with his student.

A Terrible Thing

by PikaCheeka

…Present…

"It's a terrible thing, to watch someone you love die…isn't it, _Obito_?" The mockery was clear in his voice. "Especially when you are so helpless to stop it…." He spoke softly, an unreadable emotion flashing through his eye.

The younger man bit back a retort. He wasn't going to talk about Rin. Not to this monster. He had had too long to dwell on her death, analyzing all of the details, and he knew the pieces did not fit. She died because someone wanted her to die, and he was well aware of how small that list was. "Madara."

"Yes?" A faint smile crossed his face.

His mangekyou snapped open as he lunched forward, but Madara was too fast for him, casually sidestepping him and slapping his staff down on Obito's back. The kamui never activated.

"You're slow because you're dying. The Juubi took its toll on you." Tapping his fingers on his staff, he slowly began pacing a circle around him, his lone eye bright with mockery.

One didn't need to be a sensor to feel the raw chakra of the juubi radiating off of Madara. It was darker now, even angrier than before. "Just as it's eating you." But even as he said it, he knew something was wrong, because one could feel the same chakra from Madara even before he had become the jinnchuuriki. They had only intensified one another.

Madara ignored him, perhaps aware of how lucky he was. "You know. I have only ever loved three people in my time. A brother, a lover, an heir."

…77 years ago…

When Izuna came of age, Madara gave him his first falcon. He had agonized over it for months, unsure of who to give to him, unsure of if he would properly care for her, as all of his falcons were female. In the end he had settled on his smallest, a hawk with a perpetually puzzled gaze and a tendency to hop on her perch when excited. It pained him to part with her, but she would suit Izuna best.

"You'd give her to me?" Izuna raised an eyebrow, not moving, when Madara entered his room with the bird on his shoulder. He was mature for his years, even more mature than Madara himself had been at that age.

"Yes. Come and I'll show you how to fly her."

Izuna had laughed then, a sound that made his brother's heart flood with relief, and stepped towards him. There had always been a coldness to him, as if he carried the burden of killing their mother by being born with him every moment, and his laughter was a rare thing. It only made Madara love him all the more, wanting to protect that sound.

As he slid the door open and stepped outside, his brother caught him from behind, jumping on his back and wrapping his arms tightly around his neck.

Madara staggered back from the weight. "Don't do that anymore. You're thirteen and too big," he groaned. But he didn't mean it. He remembered the days when he had carried Izuna like that through their encampments, only a child himself but unwilling to share the littlest family member with his two surviving brothers.

His brother knew he didn't mean it, either, and didn't let go the entire trek through the village into the field beyond.

…66 years ago...

"The meeting hall will go here, not in the center of the village but the…what are you doing?" Madara snapped, looking up from the map.

"Don't you ever take your gloves off?" Hashirama tugged gently at his right sleeve again from across the table as he said it.

"No."

"I bet you have soft hands under there. No callouses from weapons, eh?"

Madara stopped writing. "What do you want?" he sighed, all too familiar with Hashirama's passive requests and insistence. It had been a year since he had signed the treaty, and he had spent the last year in an ongoing fight against those passive requests as he forcefully dominated all the clans around them with laughing and apologizing profusely beside him. He was the only one Madara found himself increasingly unable to refuse over the last year, and this terrified him.

The Senju calmly pulled at each fingertip of the glove. Madara didn't stop him, at once enraged that he would dare do this and amused that he was so interested.

When the glove was off, Madara fought back the urge to jerk his hand away. He was curious, though he was unwilling to admit it.

Hashirama turned his hand over and rubbed his palm, sliding his own calloused thumbs over the pads of his fingers. His skin was rough, warm and a deep tan against Madara's own paleness. He laughed after a moment. "Too soft. You shouldn't wear them anymore."

"What do you care?" he asked irritably, but he still didn't pull away, and now he was asking himself silently why he wasn't. He wanted to. He needed to.

The other man ignored his question. "Your pulse quickens when I do this."

It was Madara's turn to not answer.

…18 years ago...

"What's that?" Obito pointed, a terrible habit that caused Madara to slap his hand away. His student was unperturbed though, immediately pointing again.

"My kusarigama."

"Did you ever kill anyone with it?"

"No. I cut my hair with it."

"You never cut your hair, you slob."

"Ah ah." Madara raised an eyebrow. The only person who had ever dared be so rude to him in the past was Hashirama. He would have killed anyone else. "Watch it."

"It's getting rusty just hanging there. Don't you want me to clean it for you?"

"No. It's just a tool. I don't care about it anymore."

"But I'm bored down here. Please?" He was whining now.

"Fine. You can cut your own hair with it when you're through," he reached over and grabbed a fist of Obito's hair, now brushing against his shoulders. It reminded him of his own at that age, though he would never admit it to the boy.

Obito yelped and twisted away. "Can you take me into your genjutsu past again afterwards?"

"Perhaps. What do you want to see?" He found himself agreeing, asking before he could consider it. Why was he interested in the boy's desires? He was only a tool for him.

"I want to see the times when you smiled again."

The words sliced through Madara as if Obito had cut him through with his own weapon, and with a sharp pain he understood that a tool stopped being a tool when you found yourself loving them.

…Present…

Obito faltered then. He hadn't expected it, hadn't expected the flood of images that Madara so casually forced upon him with his genjutsu. He knew that he was helpless against the older man's eyes, but it wasn't what he did that startled him. It was what he showed.

Because Madara was telling him, showing him, that he had cared for him, and it wasn't what he had spent the last seventeen years believing. He had long since given up hoping for the acknowledgement of his teacher. To be on the level of his brother and Hashirama though, that was impossible. He opened his mouth to tell him that he would not fall for his lies, but found the words dying in his mouth as he found himself remembering moments during those two years underground when Madara had displayed a grudging affection.

The man in front of him never lowered his gaze, only tapped his fingers lazily against his staff, and Obito felt himself falling. "All betrayed me in the end," the jinnchuuriki finally whispered.

…70 years ago...

"Why must I wait?"

Izuna lifted his head several inches to better see him. His brother was hunched over, not even facing him, as though ashamed of his blindness. "What sort of question is that?"

"You're just going to die anyway. What difference does it make if you have eyes until then?" Madara snapped, his irritation and anxiety palpable.

"Would you deny your brother his sight for this last request of his life?"

Ironically enough, the healers had saved his damaged organs. It was the muscle they could now close, and what could have been a rapid death became a drawn-out torture. Madara had initially believed that Izuna would live, and had returned to the battlefield with renewed vigor and loathing for the Senju. Within a matter of weeks his eyesight, already faltering, had vanished entirely. His eyeballs had faded to such a degree that the sun burned them, and Madara was forced to recede into the darkness, commanding his forces from the shadows. As the time passed and Izuna failed to heal, he had mustered the energy one evening to offer his eyes to his brother. For the clan, he had said, as he feared Madara would not take them were they meant for him and him alone. For the clan, Madara could take his eyes tomorrow, after he saw one last sunset.

The younger man had not expected this response, this bitter and selfish urgency. Nor did he expect Madara's reply. "It doesn't matter, does it? You didn't expect to live to see today. Every sunset you have seen this last month has been your last. I need them now."

Izuna fell back then, too exhausted to argue. Several moments passed before he spoke again. "Do what you must."

(One week later)

But Izuna lingered longer than either believed he would with unexpected resilience, and that day or two stretched into nearly a week. A week of agonizing silence as the infection seeped through his body.

"I should have waited," the older Uchiha muttered, again not facing him. He didn't need to. Izuna had already felt the contours of his face moments ago, had felt the dryness of his eyes. He didn't know what Madara had done when he took his eyes, but the transplant had not gone well. He had bled that whole week, his heavy lids almost swollen shut over them as his body adjusted to the new power flooding through him. They had stopped bleeding this morning, and that was when Izuna knew he would finally die.

"It doesn't matter," he whispered.

Madara felt the hand between his tug away, but he crushed those fingers tightly in his grasp. "No. No no no..."

With his fading strength, he managed to pull his hand away. "I was just going to die anyway."

He heard the air sucked in through his brother's teeth.

…62 years ago...

"Konoha will fall as it is. In fact…it should never have existed. I can take care of that for you. Hokage." The word rolled off his tongue calmly enough, but the hatred of it was clear.

"You'd destroy your own home to get back at me?"

"It's not home anymore." He backed up then, turning for the door.

Hashirama didn't move when he spoke, only touched the wall and let the mokuton rip through the foundation of the building, thick vines rising up to cover the door. He didn't know if this was another one of Madara's fits, or a genuine threat, but he was tired of it. "I won't let you leave."

There was a crash as Madara lunged at him, slamming him against the wall, his eyes blazing red and hateful as he spat in rage. "I'll rip your throat out before you stop me," he hissed, running a nail across the older man's neck. "You don't own me. You never owned me."

"I didn't say that." Hashirama spoke calmly, but his eyes were cold now, his slow rage forming behind them. He didn't flinch away when his partner began applying pressure against him.

"I've always been the one in control. I'm the one who drove you away when we were young. I'm the one who pushed you to attempt suicide. I'm the one who stopped you. I'm the one whose signature changed the world." He was visibly shaking in anger now. "And it was me who accepted your hand that night when…"

Hashirama cut him off then, gently prying his fingers away from him. "And I'm the one who never gave up on you."

Madara leaned back, the sharingan fading back to a deep grey. "Only because you were stupid enough to believe that I cared."

(One year later)

He twisted the blade as he spoke. "If anyone threatens the village, be they friend, lover, or child… I will kill them. I won't sacrifice that peace and our dream…no, my dream, for anyone, no matter what they may mean, may have meant, to me."

Madara felt himself fading then. The jutsu had worked. He knew the jutsu had worked. But a blade was not words, and a fatal wound such as this was not one that a jutsu could save him from. He hadn't expected this. He hadn't expected to lose at all, though he had provided an escape if the need arose. But this was not something he knew how to handle. Hashirama had hurt him a thousand times over the years, a thousand cuts digging deeper and deeper into him, and he had finally created a wound that Madara would never recover from.

When Hashirama released the handle of his sword, he did nothing to stop Madara from falling into the mud, unwilling to even spare him that dignity.

"You're…" he managed to gasp out. "Reversing what is meant to be…." He didn't know why he said it. He had survived, though the other did not know it. And in that moment he re-affirmed that he would live on to destroy everything they, no, _Hashirama,_ had ever built. Because only in destroying what Hashirama had built could he regain what he had lost that night.

His body began to die as the Senju finally fell at his feet, and in his last moments he silently begged him to cry. He couldn't abandon Madara, not that far.

But the tears never came.

…17 years ago...

Madara was young again, perhaps twenty, perhaps twenty-five, as he often was when he trained Obito. He had been a teenager several times, but it made Obito uneasy in ways he couldn't quite explain, and Madara had moved away from that at his request. He stood there, silently studying the boy in front of him, the funeral robes dragging on the floor of the cave. Obito couldn't remember when he had started to wear them in his genjutsu, but it terrified him.

"I'm wearing these because I am going to leave you in a moment."

Obito jumped. "How did…"

"I know everything you think when I am attached to this," he replied, reaching back as if to touch the tubes attached to his spine, as invisible as they were in his illusion.

"What happens when you die?"

"I'm not going to die."

"But you're wearing cremation robes."

Madara shook his head. "These make you nervous, don't they?" He raised an arm and studied the threads a moment. "Do you know why that is?"

"Because I don't want you to die." He didn't know why he said it. He could never decide if he hated or loved Madara, but he felt that deep down, he would miss him somehow.

"I am only seventy years older than you, but those seventy years have been a time of great change. The robes I would have worn in my era are worn no longer. The ones I wear now are ones you might wear."

There was only silence.

Madara moved forward then, falling to his knees before him. "I'm not the one who is going to die. You don't exist anymore. _Obito _died." He was smiling as he said it, his fingers gently stroking the boy's face.

"What do you mean?" He was trembling, unable to pull away.

"You're Madara now. Nobody cares about Obito." He wrapped his arms slowly around him, pulling him in. "Nobody ever did," he whispered into his ear.

…Present…

"I don't think I need to continue that memory though, do I? We all know how you left. How you failed to resurrect me. How you stole the juubi from me that first time. And now, how you dared defy me again. You've betrayed me more than anyone ever has. Even Hashirama." He spat the last word, the first hint of emotion he'd portrayed.

"It's you, though. Are you so blind that you can not see how it's all you?"

Madara stopped then. He said nothing, but he was no longer meeting Obito's eyes.

"You betray everyone."

"Or perhaps they just don't really…know me. Isn't this what I was saying, after all? As much as we love someone, they don't know us. They don't understand our behavior. They hurt us because we only behave as we always do." He was smiling again, this time to himself.

Obito never had the chance to refute his hypocrisy. He felt the air rush from him as Madara suddenly lunged forward, knocking the wind from him with a sharp punch to the chest. He had no time to react before the older man grabbed him by the throat and wrenched him into the air. "I forgave them, but…all suffer the same fate."

…70 years ago...

Izuna could sense him move and suddenly felt pressure on his chest. Madara leaned over him, ignoring the stench of rot from his wound and the pervasive sense of death, and kissed his forehead gently. "You are going to die. And it won't be because of any Senju dog, or because of blindness."

"Madara…I don't want you to be alone. I'm..." The apology died in his throat.

His brother was ignoring him. He had shifted his weight subtly, moved his arm as if to grab something. "It will be because of _me_."

He was swift with the knife, a single plunge to the chest and a sharp twist before ripping it up and tossing it across the room. His own brother had betrayed him in the end, mocked him, an even more painful betrayal than when he had told their father of the Senju boy his brother was spending time with. "I forgive you. I forgive you. I forgive you…" he repeated silently, wiping his hand on the futon as he listened to the death rattle grind to a halt. He found himself speaking aloud by the end of it. "I had to do it though. Because I forgive you. I stopped you from dying because of them." The stillness in the air disgusted him and after a moment he keeled over to wretch.

…45 years ago...

The years stretched into decades and a generation came and went before Hashirama met the ghost for the final time.

"They mortally wounded you." Madara said calmly with a strange tightness in his voice. His healing skills had improved in Konoha, but whether or not he could save Hashirama, he did not know. Those final words at the valley of the end had resounded in his mind for decades, weakening him with every echo.

Hashirama didn't answer. This was Madara. The dead one, now slow and tired but alive. He couldn't move, couldn't only speak, as a rush of relief spread through him. As Madara fell to his knees by his head and gently pulled him closer, he failed to notice the knife until he felt it press gently against the skin below his ear.

"Forgive me," Madara muttered softly, his fingers running through Hashirama's hair. He didn't know what he was asking forgiveness for, and he supposed it didn't matter in the end.

Hashirama reached up and grabbed his hand, squeezed it a moment before it slipped in weakness, and smiled weakly as darkness clouded his vision and fresh blood seeped from his throat. "I did thirty years ago."

Madara held him until he died, the anger and hatred fading into an abject pain. He felt a keening rise in throat before he could stop it. He had to do this. It was all he could do, in the end, for those he loved. They all betrayed him, and shortly after they did, death came to them. And Madara coveted death.

…Present…

"It's a terrible thing, watching someone you love die. Especially when one is so helpless to stop it."

Obito clawed frantically at the gloved hand, but Madara was immovable. Gone was the weak old man the boy had once cared for.

"The only way to stop it is to…." He cocked his head, his lone eye widening a moment before there was a faint snap, startling in the silence. After a moment he lowered his arm, letting Obito fall to the ground.

He smiled, straightened his gaze, and stepped over the body. "Kill them yourself."


End file.
